Episode Report Card M. Giant: C | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Mailer than Thou
By M. Giant | Season 5 | Episode 6 | Aired on 10.25.2004
Christopher lets Lorelai into his place, understating, "I owe you so big." "You look, uh, great," Lorelai lies. Christopher's tie is loose, his shirt is half-untucked and quite grungy, and his hair isn't totally perfect. Seeing the general disarray around the house, Lorelai asks, "When did Axl Rose leave?" Chris is totally stressed out, and the baby is standing on the floor next to her crib and screaming. He goes to put her back into the crib for what looks like the umpteenth time, telling Lorelai that neither of them has slept in days. Lorelai takes Gigi out of her crib, hands her to Christopher, pulls the crib away from the wall, and turns it around so that the higher crib railing is facing away the wall. She puts Gigi back in her crib, assuring Chris that she'll stay there this time. He couldn't come up with that on his own? He's an idiot.
Lorelai takes Christopher by the hand and leads him over to the sofa for the obligatory "harried parent accidentally sitting on a squeaky toy" bit. Chris apologizes for never calling her or Rory until he's in trouble. "That's what we're here for," Lorelai says, not smiling. She asks for the third or fourth time where Sherry is. Chris finally confesses that she's in Paris. When Lorelai asks when she's getting back, Chris says she's not: "I get home from Seattle and the nanny was here and she handed me a note. It said that Sherry had been offered a job in Paris and she had decided to take it. She said she had put her career on hold for almost two years, she said that I had been gone for most of that time, which I guess is true, and she wasn't going to let this opportunity pass. She said it was my turn, she was sorry, but she had to do this for her." Lorelai is stunned. "Pretty much my same reaction," Chris says. I'm stunned, too. I mean, what did Christopher ever do to deserve being abandoned to raise a child all by himself? Maybe Lorelai knows. If she does, she's not saying. She does have a plan, though. Chris should take a shower, and she'll order food and start cleaning up.
"I can't do this," Chris interrupts. "Do what, shower?" Lorelai says, and babbles about how easy showering is, obviously hoping to forestall the thoroughly assholish thing Christopher is about to say, but her efforts are in vain. "I can't raise her all by myself," Chris whines. Lorelai doesn't want to hear it. "Yes you can," she says, "because you have to. Because she's your daughter. And you're going to find a way. I did it. I did it with Rory." "You're different," Chris says. "Yes, I was sixteen," Lorelai says, rather than kicking him and pinching his nose. Christopher means that Lorelai's stronger: "You're like a superhero with red boots and a golden lasso." "It was one Halloween, Christopher," Lorelai says. Flashback, please. No? Okay. Lorelai's not buying Chris's cop-out, going so far as to say that if she'd bailed on Rory to follow the Bangles around the world, Chris would have stepped up and "everything would have been fine." Which I suspect is giving him way too much credit. "I don't even know her," Chris says. "I've been gone so much." "Well, welcome home, babe," Lorelai says, a lot less meanly than he deserves. Chris slumps off to shower as Lorelai comforts Gigi, who's gotten her seven-hundredth wind of crying back. Lorelai softly sings a line of "Manic Monday." Since it's Thursday, I'm wondering whether "If She Knew What She Wants" might be a more appropriate selection.